Evaluation of the Portfolio’s Implementation in Clinical Clerkship: Students’ and Staff’s Perception in Egypt

Background: Over the last two decades, the focus of curricula has shifted from the acquisition of
knowledge to the achievement of competence. The challenge is to improve the assessment scheme
to formatively support the development of competence in an integrated, coherent, and longitudinal
fashion, and assess them in a summative fashion.
Objectives: To investigate the students’ and staff’s perception towards the implementation process of
the portfolio in the clinical years at Faculty of Medicine, Suez Canal University.
Methods: Two different questionnaires were used to explore the students’ and staff’s perception
towards portfolio assessment process.
Results: The students’ response rate was 70%. 46.8% of the students agreed on the portfolio’s
complementary role to clinical teaching during rotations. They agreed that portfolio stimulated their
problem solving and clinical reasoning skills by 38.5%, and 38.2% respectively. 41.1% agreed that it
helped them in preparation for their future practice. However, 41% agreed that portfolio workload and
time required were excessive. There was no chance to improve those aspects assessed as deficient in
feedback. One of the threatening problems is copying the portfolio from others, unfortunately. 34.7%
of the students agreed that this was a problem among them. Regarding the staff, they agreed that
portfolio helped them to assess students’ competencies and permitted multiple episodes of teaching
more effectively than single observations did (75%, and 72.2%, respectively). However, 38.9% felt that
it was an exhausting and time-consuming assessment process. They thought that it would be better to
have enough time for review the portfolio in detail before the oral discussion, and that was fair if two
examiners evaluated it rather than one (64%, and 75%, respectively).
Conclusion: The portfolio helps the faculty in assessment of students’ clinical competencies in a
continuous manner but for both it was exhausting and time-consuming assessment process.